Today’s Journal has a story on the Facebook platform.

Facebook now offers more than 800 new services — from photo slideshows to online file storage — up from fewer than 100 a month ago. Meanwhile, those who are creating the Facebook services can access information about their customers and make money by selling related items and ads.

Other popular new services are fairly basic. One from Slide Inc., a San Francisco start-up, lets people highlight their “top friends” and recently had 6.3 million users. A horoscope service from RockYou Inc., a start-up in San Mateo, Calif., had 3.5 million users. Other applications include Flash Sudoku, which lets users add the popular numbers game to their page, and Stress Meter, which lets users chart their stress level for all to see.

…

Facebook’s success has attracted the attention of News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch. When asked in a recent interview whether newspaper readers are migrating to MySpace, he responded, “I wish they were. They’re all going to Facebook at the moment.”

That’s a great quote from Murdoch.

I wrote about the need for module-based personal publishing last year. I’ve spent a lot of time this week on Facebook and I think they really get it. More next week.

Note the definition of an “active” user. That’s a much tighter standard than most companies use.